CHAPTER FOUR

Still Nine Days to Deadline

 

 

A double dose of excitement, sittin’ on a pile of dread, attacks my chest as I stride through Security on my way to the pumphouse.

I’m looking for good news from Frank on what the day crew accomplished while I was sleeping. We’ve got two days of work to catch up if we have any chance of bringing in this contract on time.

We made some progress yesterday, but not nearly enough. I’ve given shitloads of promises. Stuck AmerItalia’s neck way out. If we don’t deliver, a lot of guys’ll go down with me. And depending on the damage, we might not bounce back.

But if we do this right, AmerItalia will be golden. We’ll have our pick of contracts. A chance to work for the best on the most exciting projects.

The rewards will have been worth the risk.

Which leads me to Jilly.

I just found out from Human Resources my new secretary made it through all the county, state, and federal entities overseeing energy projects in the U.S. and clocked in at 6 PM for her first 12-hour night shift.

The fact that I’m spending any brain power on her means that for me, she’s gonna be trouble with a capital T. Tangling with a beautiful, headstrong female journalist in addition to the other pressures I’m currently handling is just sheer insanity.

My mind’s still not on the job as I hit the path’s middle stretch, barely acknowledging anybody passing the other direction.

Christ. JT Vickers has certainly been one hell of a surprise. Before the interview, all my faculties had been prepared for a male journalist, probably hard-core, seasoned, kind of like the reporter Clark Gable plays in an old black-and-white Doris Day movie I love. But the Clark I’m ending up with isn’t Clark Gable. I’m getting...Lois Clark.

Hell.

In my mind’s eye, I can still see a vivid imprint of my first impression of professional Ms. Jillian Theodora Vickers as she stood in front of the windows when I’d opened that conference room door. She’d been alluring enough at a barbecue. But wearing her business armor? My palms sweat right now just thinking about it.

I glance up and take stock of where I am, quickly calculating how much farther I have to go before I can bury myself back under the piles of work Frank’s waiting to hand off to me at the pumphouse.

In the meantime, I’ll just have to make sure I keep my mind on the job at hand—the construction job, that is—and not on any part of Jilly Vickers.

I’m irritatingly hungry to feel her hair again, running my fingers through the thick mass of medium auburn shot with beams of sunshine. Makes me think of a particularly fine strain of Texas longhorns I saw roaming the countryside. I shake my head and almost laugh out loud, imagining the outrage in Jilly’s brilliant turquoise eyes if she knew I’d just compared her to a heifer. Even a fine, well-bred one like the Santa Gertrudis.

A society girl in the hot, Texas desert, going to work on my construction site. Ludicrous. She’ll never make it, and I’ll end up giving her too much of my critical time.

The pumphouse looms into view, thank goodness. With a sigh, I welcome the mundane details of my career. Instantly, I’m calm and sure once again, comfortable in the familiar, hectic routines of supervising budgets, blueprints, good people, and heavy machinery.

Drawing close, I’m hearing a lot more commotion than there should be. Men are buzzing in and out of the tired, old pumphouse like bees in and out of a hive. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who the queen bee is, agitating my pack of drones.

I step inside the ramshackle building and stand to one side, where I can see up the hallway to my office. There, behind the big metal desk, Ms. Jilly Vickers is sitting in my tufted-leather rolling chair—the one luxury I allow myself on the long, demanding hours, days, and weeks of a construction project.

The guys are giving her some grief. Subtle confusion flits across her clear, ivory features. She’s throwing some back, though, which gives me an odd little rush of satisfaction. It's the only way to survive. I doubt Ms. Jillian Theodora Vickers has been raised to fight too many of her own battles.

I don't know anything more about her than what appears on the employment application she filled out yesterday afternoon at Personnel, but I know deep in my soul that she's been sheltered. Probably by her Daddy first, then by a man, or men—my stomach knots at that image—has carefully shielded her from life's uglier moments.  I’m so certain because, if she were mine, that's exactly what I'd do.  What I'm fighting the nearly overpowering urge to go do right now.

The woman is magnificent.

My jaw clenches against the impulse to clear my office and be alone with her.  I want to hear what's being said that's making Jilly's intense eyes flash with little turquoise lightning bolts. I want them to flash that way for me.

The itch I wanted her to scratch two nights ago at the party is back, full force.

How am I going to get any work done?

Wait. I’m mistaken; the guys aren't exactly giving her grief.

Good Lord. They're vying for her.

Outdoing each other for her attention in the manner of besotted males since the dawn of time. My big, tough men who have a major deadline to meet are telling stories —whoppers—about themselves, trying to impress the new girl with their various types of prowess. And, damn the woman's eyes, she's egging them on, asking questions and taking notes, scribbling furiously in the little notepad hastily dragged out of her voluminous navy bag.

Harry Weiss, a middle-aged pipefitter who looks like he shaves with a rusty blade, is telling her something. "So, there I was—remember, Joe?—hanging from that rickety ol' scaffolding with one hand, trying to solder a mother of a pipe, with hot steam scalding my face.”

"What happened?" Her voice is all breathy.

I roll my eyes. Why was I worried about her surviving amongst this rough crew? I should have known the men would be as taken with her on first sight as—

I slam that thought down in a big hurry.

"Well, it was nip and tuck, I'm telling ya—remember, Joe?" That one grunts assent, and Harry keeps rolling. "I had to hold the soldering compound in my teeth as I worked. Whew! Thought I'd never get that leak closed up. But I knew I had to, and I had to do it before anyone else got hurt like me," he adds with a quick glance at his avid listener, probably hoping she'll ask him about his grave injuries. I cross my arms and lean back to sit on the edge of a desk just outside my office. She doesn't disappoint.

"Oh, Harry, were you hurt really badly?" Jillian asks. It sounds like there's actual sincerity in her tone.

"Ah, not too bad," Harry scoffs with a roll of his stout shoulders. My brow raises; that's the first unexaggerated grain of truth the man has uttered. "The nurse just sprayed some stuff on my face and neck. After a few days, I was okay."

Concern pours out of her. "But you went to the hospital for your burns."

"Hell, no!" Harry denies. "We were on a deadline. Nobody had time for any hospital run!"

"But you were seriously hurt—don't bother denying it, Harry," she adds as he starts to interrupt. There's a savvy twinkle in his eyes as he lets himself be overridden. "You were seriously hurt, scalded with second- or third-degree burns, while on the job. You were entitled to have your injury tended to by a physician." She scribbles some more in her notepad.

Harry's burly chest puffs out a few more inches, but before he can get in another word, someone else starts giving his story to the beautiful newcomer.

Once more, I have to admit that I've been mistaken. It isn't confusion I read on Jilly's face earlier; she's overwhelmed. And it isn't anger causing those appealing little bolts of lightning to dart from her expressive eyes; it's high interest. 

She wanted human stories from the crew, and she's getting them. Faster than she can write them down. I can almost see her trying to sort out what she's hearing, determined not to miss a detail, while she figures out where to pigeon-hole all the information and impressions in her sharp, journalistic brain for later use.

Yeah, enough.

I grit my teeth against rising anger and push myself off the desk, intent upon damming the motherlode hemorrhage I'm witnessing. "Speaking of deadlines, you men got someplace else you need to be?"

In spite of the noisy chaos in the pumphouse, my softly-spoken words penetrate. Grown men half-blush at being caught by me while telling their tales to the new-hire. They scatter instantly with mumbled apologies.

Jillian looks up from her note-taking, amazed to discover the crowd has melted to nothing like ice on a salted sidewalk. One minute she'd been fighting to catch her breath, the next, no one, nothing, all gone. She shakes her head, a little dazed, and puts away her writing materials.

"Sorry to break up the party, but AI does need to get some work done today."

She glances off in the distance, as if still thinking about the guys, and nods. "Of course."

"You promised not to interfere with the job."

The reminder rankles, as I intended. I watch her come back into herself with a snap, a faint light of battle creeping into her intelligent eyes. "So let's get to it," she challenges, her graceful chin jutting ever so slightly in the air.

I stifle a smile. It really rubs her the wrong way to have her little court disbanded. Too bad. I'm not quite done with Ms. Vickers.

I scan her silently, from head to toe, taking my time, making her squirm.

She pulls self-consciously at one leg of her jeans. A light blue t-shirt skims her curves, and her waist-length hair is tied back loosely with a navy ribbon. Those long legs I remember brushing up against yesterday under the conference table are encased in skin-tight denim, and her feet are stuffed into cowboy boots.

"Boots steel-toed?"

She beams.

"Lace-ups are safer."

Her face collapses into a scowl. I have to turn away to hide my grin. It's way too much fun ragging on her. There’s nothing wrong with her boots. In fact, they’re damn cute.

"This is my office. I'm rarely in it. If you need me—or anyone else for that matter—get Danny, the general manager, to show you how to use the loudspeaker back there." I gesture to a metal cabinet mounted on the wall by the front door of the pumphouse. Danny, hearing his name mentioned, waves at Jilly, then goes back to work.

My fingertips sizzle when I take her by the elbow and gently usher her out of my chair. It takes concentration to focus on what I’m saying instead of those interesting zaps of electricity sparking through my body. "There are phones at each of the work sheds, but the crew's usually outside working, and won't get the phones when they ring. The loudspeaker system is the quickest way to reach somebody."

She comes around the desk, clasping her notebook and bag. "Okay. Why did they take my cell phone at Security?"

"It's sort of like on an airplane. The frequencies can mess with operations in the control room or turbine areas. And, of course, no personal calls are allowed during your shift."

I indicate she should take one of the functional, though not particularly comfortable, metal arm chairs poised in front of my paper-strewn desk. "Since I'm not in here much, consider this your office, too.”

Jilly eyes the piles of clutter stashed around the room. "You need a real secretary, DePaul."

"I saved it for you. It’s your first task. Most of this stuff was here when Frank and I arrived yesterday. Anything that’s ours needs to be kept separate from the rest." Normally I spend the first day on a job setting things up the way I prefer. Knowing she was coming and that she’d need something constructive to do, I decided to wait. Now I just have to hope she can sort it out for herself. "There are some empty binders over there in the bookcase."

She sighs, a forlorn look in her eyes. "I'll try."

"I’ll need more than that from you, if you plan to stick around.”